The takeover was the museum’s first major youth-focussed event and hoped to set the ambitions and mission for the Young Creatives programme going forward. It was an end-of-year celebration and chance to present the work of the young people completed during the year-long programme. The event aimed to show what opportunities the programme offered to attract more participants.

It was also an opportunity for the young people to learn about event production and take part in the curation of the content based on what they would like to have and what they have done during the year’s Young Creatives programme - Delivered by young curators in collaboration with the Design Museum’s Young Creatives for young people aged 14 - 19 year olds.

The Young Creatives briefed us to create an event with two main themes;

1. The emergence of DIY and self-starter culture, and what this means for young people wanting to become future designers and creatives.

2. The power of design and creativity in shaping our future

   through positive change

With this in mind we focussed on giving young people the opportunity to explore the ways in which they can become the changemakers in the world through a selection of workshops, talks and participatory installations across three areas;

EXPLORE, DEBATE and CREATE

Within Explore, we designed exhibition tours alongside students from Central St. Martins. In a photography exhibition called, My London we worked with the Paiwand Harrow Boys Youth Club to explore what London means to them as young people from migrant backgrounds or unaccompanied refugee minors. A Two Pipe Problem meme posters using traditional movable type and letterpress from the things overheard around the museum.

In Debate, we had speakers including Ollie Waddington-Ball and Marie Guddene of the Trellick Tower based Goldfinger Factory; Film maker, Akinola Davies Jr.; Founder of Hato Press, Ken Kirton and; Menswear designer, Shanice Palmer. The group of designers represented a wide breadth of experience but found common ground in their self-starter attitudes and a focus on DIY culture or craft. The discussion drew on the varied experiences of the designers and explored their unique journeys into the world of design, drawing on their local communities, their identity and story-telling. The panel gave the attendees an opportunity to gain insights into the power of creative entrepreneurship, aiming to inform and inspire. They were able to learn how they might succeed in the creative industries in the 21st century, the endless different avenues there were, and get advice and answers from designers practising across the creative industries.

CREATE saw a room full of different opportunities to make something and be creative. Designers like Sam Lloyd Morris with his Rubbish Chairs and Technology Will Save Us were there to help attendees explore both analogue and digital ways of making and thinking creatively.

The Young Creatives also hosted their own space within the CREATE theme and were on hand to help visitors try some of the things that they had themselves experimented with during the year-long programme such as Riso printing, building structures with lego and making with clay. This space was also a showcase for the large amount of creative work they had completed during the programme and a space for them to continue some of the conversations with visitors about community-building and togetherness they had been having through the creative projects.

A large part of this project was leading workshops with the Young Creatives group and facilitating the decision-making process that we were encouraging the young people to get involved with. We were then able to expand on those decisions and outside of the monthly group meetings develop the event based on their thoughts and the ambitions of the programme.

I worked as young people facilitator, project manager, curator and producer and made key decisions relating to graphic and exhibition/layout design, as well as writing all marketing and interpretation copy. I developed a broad understanding of event production and the importance of communication when briefing and liaising with event contributors whether they be speakers or workshop facilitators.